


how would I speak if the song left me?

by GreekWritesFanfiction (Greece_The_Squishy_Lencha)



Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: Angst, But is Jiemma so he deserved it, Character Study, Eating Disorders, Ficlet Collection, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Inspired by Music, Mild canon divergence, Patricide, Pre-Canon, mild existential crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 08:00:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26349742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greece_The_Squishy_Lencha/pseuds/GreekWritesFanfiction
Summary: Four shorts inspired by Florence + the machine songs
Kudos: 7





	how would I speak if the song left me?

**Author's Note:**

> Tittle comes from Florence's poetry book "Useless magic". The poem's name is "song".
> 
> Times:  
> -Ultear: set before FT's return from tenrou.  
> -Lisanna: set on a nebulous time before the Tartaros arc.  
> -Minerva: set in the fourth day of the GMG if she had been the one to kill jiemma.  
> -Lucy: set at the very end of the phantom arc

* * *

* * *

_**The dog days are over.** _

* * *

* * *

Happiness hit her one night with the suddenness of lighting, as Jellal and Meredy bantered, and the forest breeze blew her hair, and silver moonshine bled into the bonfire's orange glow.

Foreign happiness that Ultear shouldn't feel, that had no place in the lives of repentant souls like them. A happiness she has vague, worn-out memories of from her short childhood.

Lukewarm, bringing unexpected calm; like the hugs from a mother she spent years despising for made-up crimes. A sentiment so full and so unbearably soothing that it terrified her.

Deep inside her, within her heavy and tired bones, something shouts for her to flee away. To leave that odd, alien peace that threatened to envelop her indefinitely, settle back into the familiar dull ache that had stayed by her side through most of her life.

She slips away at midnight to visit a town. Desperately trying to choke it down, to bury it away, yet it creeps back up with the distant sun when she believes it has finally perished.

Is this god's will? The selected punishment for her sins? To experience this little crumbs of happiness even though she can sense doom is inevitable?

When she knows for a fact there's no salvation waiting for her at the end of the road?

* * *

* * *

_**South London Forever.** _

* * *

* * *

All that she had ever done, up until that point, was in the name of the long lost Lisanna Strauss. For the girl that had her existence, her innocent and idle life unknowingly taken away by a tyrant.

For the kid that grew up to fast and the teen that died too young.

All of her new days in Earthland were spent on practice and training, trying to make up for the stolen time, trying to become as strong as the old Lisanna was supposed to have been. But she wasn't her, hadn't been since the first time her _other_ siblings swept her in a terrified embrace, since the first time she saw one of their own die.

She wasn't her, and now there it stood a lost woman trying to live a life that wasn't meant for her. Magic and quests and adventures, all of the things that she used to love, all of the things that she didn’t want anymore.

Changed by years of longing for domesticity, for stability, for normalcy. And this should count like it right?

...Right?

Beyond familial bonds, what drove her to battle for her guild every time was a small part of her heart that refused to let go of her memory.

The memory of that girl whose dreams never came through.

Doesn’t she owe her that? A few moments of existence before retreating to the sidelines. It doesn't even matter, or does it? After all, once everything's been said and done, she can't go back to being that girl.

...Is it too late for her to be someone anew?

* * *

* * *

_**Blinding.** _

* * *

* * *

She had felt it countless times throughout her life; a slow-building sensation of drowning, like being trapped underwater with no light to guide her upwards.

Minerva soon realized that sensation eased with her father's approval, brought by victory after victory over those inferior guilds and the ones that put up a fight.

Yet, in the back of her mind its shadow, its threat remained. On the wait for her weakest moment. On the wait for her mistakes. As if there were chains on her ankles that from time to time would drag her down.

The first time Sting loses she feels them tremble with a warning. When she replaces Yukino they start to pull down slowly.

When Sting loses again and he’s laying on the ground with broken ribs and a split lip, she can already feel the water lapping past her thighs. She can feel it retreating to build up into a wave.

Her father is there, giving neither praise nor venom, still he is the energy controlling the tide. He is the source of everything.

And that's when she realizes it has always been him who held her under.

She’s drowning now, drowning in red and black and white. There is a force she’s familiar with, one she had passed by before, taking charge of her burning flesh and pointing at the man who created her.

The chains break. Air fills her lungs.

* * *

* * *

_**Hunger.** _

* * *

* * *

_Ladies don't eat that much_ ; her father would say when Lucy was but twelve. _You will get fat, no one will want to marry you._

So she started to starve herself, making sense of the intangible hunger she had always felt, the one there were no words for. Not then.

By the time she was seventeen, she had gained enough strength, she had learned enough to run away and feast.

She rummaged through towns in search of something that would finally stop the emptiness within, not just the one that got appeased with meat and bread and pastries.

The hunger whose roots she had not quite understood back then, the one that rumbled within her soul and that she tried to appease through melancholic poetry and daydreams.

Suddenly she found the right food in her guildmates words, their closeness, their loyal companionship.

So simple, so little, and yet this was the greatest banquet she had ever feasted upon.

How had she been able to starve for this long? How had her body not consumed itself in dismay? She would never know, but after tasting such delicacies, after becoming so full. How can he expect for her to return and make do with scraps?

How could she ever let herself starve again?


End file.
